


Just Below the Surface

by narrow_staircases



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Hell, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narrow_staircases/pseuds/narrow_staircases
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So,” the demon says, settling back on his heels as Dean tries to figure out how to breathe again, “this is all pretty simple, Dean. I want the angel Castiel.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Below the Surface

Montana is _cold_. And majestic, really, but that's not quite so relevant when it's 11:30 at night and there's a grave that needs desecrating.

Dean spits into his hands, leans into the shovel again and winces at the blisters he can feel forming on his palms. Sammy, lucky dog, is nursing a twisted elbow (it stretches the limits of reasonable belief how often that kid can manage to fuck up something about his arms), so he's back at the diner in town that's been the locus of this restless spirit. Former owner, they're pretty sure, pissed about renovations to the place or changes to the menu or something? Honestly Dean wasn't really paying attention, but if they somehow pinned this on the wrong guy and he's digging up Mr. Burnetti for no fucking reason, he's making Sammy do the rest of the heavy lifting on this case, twisted elbow or not.

Spade hits wood with a hollow thunk, and Dean sighs. Thankfully Mr. Not-A-Fan-Of-Introducing-Vegan-Options kicked it sometime back in the 60s, so he's pretty sure the coffin will be on the flimsy side. They've had to bust through some seriously fortified caskets before, and he doesn't want to have to deal with that shit tonight. Yeah, he's got the tools for it in the trunk, but he had just enough to drink while waiting for nightfall that he's sober enough to know that he's too drunk to handle an axe right now.

He scrapes the last of the dirt away from the head of the coffin and slams the edge of the shovel between the boards that look weakest. It takes five more swings, but eventually the rotting wood caves and Dean nearly pukes. As decomposing bodies go, this one doesn't smell  _that_ bad, but he's pretty sure the shovel drove through the skull on that last stroke, and anyway . . . let's just say he's not as good with corpses as he was pre-Hell. He breathes slowly out through his nose, in through his mouth, grabs the lighter fluid and goes to town with it. The acrid fumes mask the musty, gaggingly almost-sweet smell of Mr. Burnetti's remains, and Dean manages to climb out of the grave with all the contents of his stomach where they belong.

He strikes a match, lights the whole book and drops it in the freshly-dug grave. It catches instantly, the crackling flames warming the frigid air around him. Maybe another night, five (or forty-five) years ago he would have lingered to warm up a bit, but tonight he just wants to get the hell out of dodge. Drive back to the hotel, end the day with a few beers, start again tomorrow. Sammy's already got leads on a big bad something down in Kentucky, and chances are they'll catch wind of another job somewhere along the drive. Maybe even meet up with Cas. It's been four weeks since they've even heard from the angel, and that was just a quick text asking Sam to add more airtime to his phone. Dean could text him first, sure, but what is he going to say that's not gonna sound pathetic? _Hey buddy, drinking alone again tonight, wish you were here!_ Yeah, that's a fucking brilliant plan.

He's about fifty feet away from the Impala when the siren starts, swooping in out of absolutely nowhere. Dean sizes up the distance between himself and the quickly-approaching patrol car lights (they must have been cruising by on a regular sweep of the road and caught sight of the grave fire), and rules out making a run for it. He's learned through unfortunate experience that rural cops are way more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, and there's no way he's shaking a tail out on the prairie. _Shit_.

The car pulls to a stop in a messy slide a couple of yards away, and a cop spills out of the driver's hand side, his gun already trained on Dean. “ _Hands above your head! Hands above your head!_ ”

Dean raises his arms slowly, trying to size up Montana's finest. He's angry, but controlled. An older guy, maybe in his mid-forties. He doesn't look like he's likely to get twitchy and blow Dean's head off, which is a small blessing, he supposes.

The officer narrows his gaze as he steps towards Dean. “So what's wrong with the dead folks in your town, huh?” he growls. “Bad enough you think you gotta burn a grave, but you feel the need to come over to Meagher County to do it?”

“Uh—”

“Save it, buddy, I know every dang person in this town and you ain't one of 'em. You're guilty as sin and we both know it, so just shut your mouth and put your hands on the hood.” He gestures to the patrol car with his head, and Dean reluctantly does as he says because, fuck it, he's basically right.

The cop pats him down thoroughly, tosses the gun and knife he'd been carrying into the trunk of the car, and slaps a pair of cuffs onto Dean's wrist. Muttering under his breath (apparently _,_ _good, clean boys_ don't carry _sacrificial-looking cultish blades_ ), he leads Dean over to the passenger's side of the car, shoves him in, and latches the other side of the cuffs to the handle above Dean's head.

Okay. So not the most, uh, _secure_ choice, but at the same time it's not like he can exactly pick the lock on the cuffs with the cop sitting right next to him. He's got his other hand free, though, so maybe if he's lucky he can lift the guy's gun or something—

“Don't even think about it,” the officer says as he opens the driver's side door. “Yeah, I see the gears turning, planning some kind of escape.” He buckles his seat belt, looks Dean in the eye. “I will tase you, you so much as look at me funny, and I will not feel bad about it in the slightest.”

Dean settles back and tries to act nonchalant. Play along for now, get the drop on this guy later once he's let his guard down. He suppresses the urge to crane his head around and look for the Impala as they drive off, thankful that he'd parked in a fair amount of cover. Grave desecration he can probably talk his way out of with a little charm and some bail money from Sam. Worst case scenario, they cough up and pay a couple fines. Trunk full of weaponry covered with foreign-looking symbols, he'd probably get labeled a domestic terrorist and end up dealing with the FBI. Again.

The patrol car picks up speed once they hit the main road, completely empty at this time of night and in this part of the county. The cemetery's about fifteen miles out of town, totally secluded, and it hits him again just how stupid his luck is that he somehow managed to pick likely the _one_ moment that whole evening when a cop would have been around. He always assumes worst case scenarios, Dad taught him that, but this is just a little bit ridiculous.

Their speed has been steadily increasing, and Dean jolts back in his seat a bit as the cop lays on the gas a little harder yet. Cautiously, he leans imperceptibly over to eye the speedometer. “Uh, dude—” he blurts out before he can stop himself, because yeah it's a flat empty road, but _ninty?_ What the hell?

The cop's got his taser out of the holster before Dean even realizes that he's reached for it. “Shit, wait!” Dean yells, sliding as far back against the side door as he can. “I'm not gonna try anything, I just _—jesus fuck!”_ The car swerves as the officer drifts into the other lane to avoid a pothole, then over-corrects heading back. Instead of slowing down, he guns the engine again, and _shit_ , Dean doesn't know what is going on, but it is not good. “Man, seriously, slow down, you are going to kill us!”

The cop gives him a funny look and, astonishingly, lets up on the gas pedal. He keeps his eyes on Dean as they start to lose momentum, and Dean suddenly realizes he's actually more freaked out now than he was when they were trying to beat some kind of record. “You're right,” the cop answers calmly. “I really do _not_ want you dead, that would defeat the purpose, so we need to be going at a much slower speed—” and he _wrenches_ the wheel hard to the right and the tires squeal and crunching and gravel and _fuck fuck fuckkkk—_

 

/ / / / / /

 

Cold is the first thing he registers. Cold, like maybe he's sitting on a slab of ice, cold drilling through his legs deep into his bones and binding him down. The next thing to hit him is the pain, though, and as soon as it does he wonders why he even noticed the cold in the first place.

His right arm is a mass of pain, or more like eight different kinds of pain, through every inch of muscle and bone and skin. If he tries to sift through them and catalogue each one—and his brain is trying to latch onto some sort of meaningless, numbing task to keep himself from losing it—he feels like he can identify them all: sharp, bright pains in his hand are fractured bones, the radiating numbness a dislocated shoulder, the burning gashes and scrapes over his palm and forearm and bicep and—jesus, does he have any skin left at all? He's not even sure how he has an _arm_ still with all the damage he can feel, but it's got to be attached if the nerve endings are still firing. Phantom arm, maybe, that's a thing—which is funny, sort of, to think of his potentially severed arm as a vengeful spirit haunting his ass, although _shit_ he wishes it would back off . . .

. . . Okay, fuck. He's getting loopy and that means nothing good, because the third and fourth things he's realized are that his arms are tied behind him, and someone else is in the room.

He hasn't managed to open his eyes yet, but he can hear footsteps to his left, moving back and forth, never pausing for too long. Dean tries to test the restraints with his good arm, but “good” turns out to be extremely relative in this situation. Pain flares up in his wrist as soon as he moves it, it's probably twisted at least if not broken, but all that is more or less inconsequential because it's cable ties binding his arms to some pipes along a wall, maybe a radiator. He's not going anywhere.

He must have made some sort of noise because the pacing footsteps stop abruptly. “Well it's about time.”

Dean struggles to open his eyes, feeling like he's fighting weeks of sleepless nights, and gets them open just in time to see the cop from earlier squat down next to him, an impatient look on his face. “You know you were out for something like”—he makes an elaborate show of looking at a non-existent watch—“oh, about fifty minutes? That's fif _ty_ , not fif _teen_. Five-zero.” The cop grabs his shoulder and shakes it, and Dean bites off a yelp. “And I'm not in _that_ much of a hurry, but still, it's not particularly polite to keep me waiting, Winchester.”

Dean sucks in a breath, his lungs protesting. “ _Christo._ ”

“Oh, wonderful, so clever of you to have figured it out,” the officer laughs as his eyes shutter black. “Gold star, detective. Fantastic _legwork_ ,” he adds, placing his hand on Dean's shin and leaning his weight into it deliberately. Dean moans through clenched teeth, his back arching and hands scrabbling at nothing. From the white-blinding pain of it the demon must be pressing down on another fracture or a bone-deep gash.

“So,” the demon says, settling back on his heels as Dean tries to figure out how to breathe again, “this is all pretty simple, Dean. I want the angel Castiel.”

Dean laughs, or chokes (it's all relative). “Yeah, not happening.”

“Hm, no, I'm pretty sure it is,” the demon replies. “And I'll let you do it the simple way, if you want.” He prods Dean again, this time his dislocated shoulder, and he nearly blacks out. “Pray to him,” the demon says.”

“Bite me.”

The demon chuckles and shakes his head. “Not really my style, Dean,” he answers as he stands. “Although I understand you felt differently when you were in the pit?”

Dean's stomach curls in on itself, and he screws his eyes shut, listening to the demon rummaging for something in the corner of the room. He can feel the panic building and he desperately tries to will it away, to fend off the flashback he can't afford. _Freak out over it later, Winchester_. If he has a later. Fuck, he is so screwed.

“I mean, that's only secondhand information,” the demon continues. He settles cross-legged on the floor next to Dean, looking far too comfortable given the knife held in his hand. “And Alistair likes to spin some tall tales, sure, but I get the feeling he never had to exaggerate about you.” His smile is almost fond, and for a brief, sick moment Dean gets the feeling that he's looking at him with pride, like the way a kid brother might look up to his older sibling.

The demon sighs. “One last shot, Dean. You want to pray to him?”

Dean grits his teeth. “Fuck you,” he growls.

“I figured as much.” The demon hardly sounds disappointed, studying Dean as he tosses the knife casually from hand to hand. “Well, this isn't going to be particularly creative, but I'd gladly accept pointers if you have any.” And he slices through Dean's t-shirt, blade angled shallow over his ribs.

It hurts like a motherfucker, but then pretty much everything does at this point. Dean's not really worried, not for Cas at least. The demon wasn't lying when he said his technique was bland, and Dean's withstood decades worse in hell. So he'll probably die, yeah, and it's not going to be pleasant (especially not with the monologuing this demon has going, jesus christ), but he's not giving Cas up.

The demon is still talking. “I had thought your ribs would break in the crash, honestly,” he says as he continues to peel back layer after thin layer of flesh from Dean's side. “And I know, I could break them now, boot to the side, but that's not nearly as satisfying.” He stops abruptly, taps Dean's chin with his free hand. “Aren't you even going to ask why I want your angel in the first place?” Dean just stares at him, and the demon shrugs. “I guess you're right, it's purely academic at this point.” And he goes back to work.

“So yes, breaking your ribs, that would be easier, sure. _Or_ I can whittle you right down to the bone—” (and he taps the blade gently and Dean can hear the sharp _ting_ of metal against something solid and his body shudders in protest and revulsion) “—and get the job done that way.”

A cold knot of almost-understanding collects in the pit of Dean's stomach. “Wha—”

“ _Sigils_ , Dean,” the demon says, patiently, as if talking to a child. “Angel warding, painted across your ribs? Surely you didn't think you were the first person an angel has ever warded, and they're not too creative with where they do their dirty work.” He grins. “And I'd say it's a pretty fair bet that when these go and you flicker back onto his radar, your friend is going to hurry his ass over here as fast as those little wings can carry him.”

“ _Exorcit te,_ ” Dean chokes out over the rage and panic in his throat. “ _Omnis spiritus satanicus--_ ” The demon twitches violently, but quickly regains control, and when it does, he's pure rage. He presses the edge of the bloodied knife to Dean's lips, and the Latin dies on his tongue.

The demon lifts his free arm and shows Dean the brand on his wrist. A binding mark, tying the demon to its vessel. “I'm not making this easy on you, Winchester,” he snarls. “Try that again, and I will cut your fucking tongue out.” And then the knife is back at Dean's ribs, boring down, and the pain was bad enough before but now with the harsh rasping sound as the demon scrapes away at the Enochian letters etched into his bone he's writhing, sick. He wasn't praying before, but now the words are gushing through his brain, he's crying out to the angel with more desperation than he ever has before. _Cas, it's a trap! You hear me, Cas? Don't come, Cas, please don't come, it's a trap, stay away, please Cas, don't don't don't don't—_

The air changes; he can feel it even through his terror. “Dean?”

Dean opens his eyes, and several things happen all at once. He sees the anger play across Castiel's face, his hand raised to smite, but in the same moment the demon drops the blade, produces a lighter from somewhere, and all but dives across the floor with it. Flames shoot up from his outstretched arm and race across the floor, circling in on themselves and trapping Cas inside the ring.

Dean's head falls back and his whole body slumps, defeated. “Cas—” he tries, but his voice gives up on him (he wonders, vaguely, if he'd been screaming the whole time the demon was redecorating his ribcage) and that's all he can get out. His brain continues to supply the rest, even though Cas probably can't hear him anymore. _You idiot. You fucking idiot, I_ _ **told**_ _you, why didn't you listen to me?_

The demon claps his hands, giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. “Like clockwork!” he exclaims proudly, skipping around the circle of blazing holy oil. “Abso _lutely_ flawless!”

“What have you done to Dean?” Cas asks, his voice low, deadly.

“Oh, that.” The demon waves a hand in Dean's direction. “He's used to it, don't worry. Just an _incredibly_ clever plan to trap an angel.”

“He's lost too much blood,” Cas interrupts, and Dean doesn't think he's imagining the trace of panic in his voice. “His body is not made to withstand that much—”

“It doesn't matter,” the demon growls. “Now, isn't anybody going to ask me _why_ I wanted to trap an angel? _This_ angel?”

Dean is barely listening, his brain still caught on Cas's words. _He's lost too much blood_. He can feel it pooling by his side, his jacket growing sticky and heavy with it. Rivulets that have trickled down his ruined arm and collected in his palm. That if he strains he can just barely reach with the fingertips of his other hand. _Cas, thank you,_ he thinks, and sets to work, praying the demon doesn't notice his frantic movements.

There's no reason to worry, though, as the demon is growing more and more impatient by the second. He stamps his foot petulantly. “No one?” he whines. “Come on, Castiel, you're not the tiniest bit curious why I'm doing this?”

“You're working for Zachariah,” Cas responds, glancing at the demon with complete disinterest. “Or Raphael, or someone who wants me as leverage and doesn't mind who they dirty themselves with to do business. And no, I don't particularly care.” He turns his attention back to Dean. “Dean? Dean, are you all right, can you hear me?”

“'m peachy, Cas,” Dean mutters. He's weaving back and forth on the hazy edge of consciousness, but the warding mark's almost complete. He thinks. Without being able to see he doesn't know if he's drawn everything in its proper place, or if he's done it too small and everything's jumbled together, or if he's dripped more blood onto it and fucked it up. He doesn't even know for sure if it will still work with Cas inside the circle. It's one of the longest shots he's taken in a whole lifetime of long shots, but he's got nothing else left to fight with.

The demon's bottled-up rage suddenly shatters. “ _He doesn't matter_!” he yells, spinning on Dean and driving his foot hard into Dean's hip. The blackout is instantaneous, and when he slowly swims back up from it he can hear, dim over his own ragged breathing, Cas, trying to reason with the demon, pleading, _please don't hurt him anymore_. Dean can feel himself going into shock, his body locking up, shivers engulfing him from head to foot. He can't feel his legs anymore.

Time to test his last remaining thread of luck. “Cas—” he gasps out, and locks eyes with the angel. “Cas, I'm sorry.” He strains his hand, presses it as best he can to the sticky pattern on the concrete floor, and watches his angel get ripped out of time and space.

The silence that follows is terrible. The demon turns toward him, slowly, his eyes black, his expression blank, as if he hasn't quite registered yet that Dean has snatched away his prize. Dean hadn't even thought this far ahead to be honest, but now he's expecting a tirade, screaming and a lot of ugly stabbing and he's terribly glad he's so close to passing out already. _Sorry, Sammy,_ he thinks.

Instead, the demon is calm. Calmly picks up the knife from where it lies a few feet away from Dean. Calmly leans over him and starts carving. Calmly shoves a hand against his mouth to muffle his screams. Just black eyes and carefully controlled rage, and Dean lets the darkness wash over him.

 

/ / / / / /

 

“Dean? _Dean!_ ”

Something is shaking him. Which is rude, because he really doesn't want to be conscious right now.

“Dean! Oh god, don't do this to me, you bastard.” A hand on his side, pressing _waytoofuckinghardfuckkkkk,_ and beeping, muttered cursing, then, “thank _christ_ , yes, my brother needs an ambulance, immediately. Uh, old rail station on highway 470, just north of the tracks. Yes, yes that's it. Oh jesus, like everywhere—he's got stab wounds on his abdomen that go all the way to the bone, his arm is practically shredded, I—god, he's lost so much blood . . . Yeah, I'm putting pressure on the worst of the wounds, he's—yes, he's got a pulse, a weak pulse. Okay. Okay.” More beeping, then a tinny female voice giving calm, medical-sounding instructions.

“Dean, can you hear me?” Sam leans around him, and he feels the ties around his wrists suddenly give way with a snap. He tries to hold back a groan when Sam maneuvers him so that he's lying down with his head on his brother's lap instead of slumped over, but it slips past his chattering teeth anyway. “Dean?” He can hear the relief flood his brother's voice. “God, Dean, you're going to be okay, the ambulance is on its way.”

He can feel the darkness rushing back. “K, S'mmy,” he murmurs. “'s'okay.”

 

/ / / / / /

 

Snatches of things float to him through the buzzing in his head: indistinct voices—something tugging at the back of his hand—sharp edges digging into his cheekbones. His arm is on fire, he thinks abstractly, and wonders if that means he's back _there_. He feels the panic start to rise, even though he's pretty sure that if he was there he'd be a lot more lucid. Hell was always technicolor vivid, the picture sharp even in his nightmares. This feels foggy, dull, but he doesn't know every trick up Alistair's sleeve and now that the suspicion is in his head it's taking hold, consuming him.

Alarms start to beep from somewhere around him, he can't move his legs, and suddenly the fear is like a tsunami breaking over him. He's dimly aware of movement at his side, and then it's _Cas_ , his voice gentle. “Dean. I'm here.” A hand against his arm, and a sudden _relief_ , a coolness that grounds him, comforts, until the panic subsides and he can drift back to sleep.

 

/ / / / / /

 

When he wakes up, he's in a hospital bed. Disinfectant, the too-tight pull of the sheets, intermittent beeping from the machine next to him. Something tickles his nose. He makes a move to bat at it, but his arm is immobile. Come to think of it, he can't even feel his arm, and, panicked, his eyes shoot open. Or, try to shoot open. In reality it's a lot more groggy blinking, and by the time he's finally staring at his arm, all still there in one heavily bandaged and splinted-up piece, Sam is hovering over him.

“Hey, Dean,” he says softly, and Dean can hear the thickness in his voice that says no matter how many times he's done this, no matter how many times Dean's pulled through and woken up, it won't erase the fact that one time, he didn't.

“My nose itches,” Dean says, because that's easier than _I'm sorry_ , and also because it does _._

Sam smiles weakly. “Nasal cannula,” he answers.

“Head's fuzzy.”

“That'll be the morphine, the nurses have you dosed up pretty good.”

Dean surveys the damage, looks away from his bandaged ribs as the memories start sweeping back over him through the medicated fog. “Give me the status report.”

“Dislocated shoulder, multiple fractures in your arm and hand, lacerations and, uh, road burn over a lot of your right side. Piece of glass in your left leg, the doctor said it was about a quarter inch away from hitting your femoral artery. Lot of bruising on your side, and, um . . . ” Sam turns slightly green, fishing for words.

“I'm gonna have a little less padding on that half, huh?” Deflect, move on, lose his shit over it some other time down the road.

Sam isn't amused. “Dean, you have— _strips_ of flesh missing. Do you have any idea how freaked the doctors were, how hard it was to convince them to _not_ call the cops?”

“Well, _sorry_ for being such an inconvenience, next time I'll make sure to get tortured in a less _freaky_ way,” Dean snaps.

“Dean, I didn't—”

“Forget it, Sammy,” he mutters. “I didn't either.” He shifts on the bed, wiggles his fingers and toes experimentally, then wishes he hadn't. “What about the black-eyed son of a bitch?” he asks.

Sam shrugs. “I took care of him.” Matter-of-fact, and Dean fights the urge to ask whether he Ruby's-knife-took-care-of-him, or demonic-mind-powers-took-care-of-him.

He's hesitant to ask the other question, afraid that he hallucinated the angel's presence, but it pushes up through his throat anyway. “And Cas?”

“He's here,” Sam answers, and the relief is fucking _sensational_. “He actually went to get me a bagel, he was insisting I eat something.”

“Good.” _Thank fuck, Cas's alive, he's okay. He's okay._

Maybe it's the morphine and he drifts of for a minute, or maybe the angel just has weirdly perfect timing, but suddenly Cas is standing in the doorway, paper bag and coffee in hand, an honest-to-god smile on his face. It's such a ridiculous contrast from the last time he saw him that Dean starts to laugh, which his ribs protest violently, and by the time Cas makes it over to the bed he knows there are tears in his eyes.

“Dean, breathe,” Cas says, and it's not quite his _I-am-a-goddamn-angel-of-the-Lord_ voice, but it's got something of that ilk behind it. Dean tries to steady his gasps, reaches his good arm up to swipe at the tears hanging itchy at the corners of his eyes.

Cas pulls the chair closer to the bed, perches on it anxiously. “Dean, you need to be more careful,” he cautions. “You're still very seriously injured.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I got that. But they got me on morphine, it's all good.”

Cas shakes his head, sadly. “I'm sorry, Dean, I would have healed you if I could,” he says, “but I'm not 'juiced up' enough.” He says it casually, throws in the air quotes, but Dean knows. Knows it's his fault.

“Cas . . .” he falters. “The warding sigil, _christ,_ I'm so sorry, I just didn't know anything else to do.”

Cas shakes his head. “It was a good plan, Dean,” he says. “It's . . . not pleasant, but there's no lasting damage. I've expended most of my healing abilities on myself, though, so I won't be very useful for a while.”

“I don't need you to be useful, Cas.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and the silence that follows is uncomfortable. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sam hover by the door and then slip quietly into the hallway. Okay, so he's not the only one who feels like this is maybe turning into a _moment._ Still, he can't find it in himself to regret it. He treads forward awkwardly, hesitant. “Just, you know. To be okay.” _To stay with me._

Cas's eyes are wide, and Dean wonders how much he _knows_. If human emotions are becoming second-nature to him, if he knows how to decipher all _this_ or if Dean is going to have to explain everything to him at some point, fumbling over words that he won't know how to string together into any kind of sense, because fuck if he can even explain it in his own mind. Especially not with the morphine slowing down his thoughts, turning his brain sloppy as it nudges him back towards sleep.

Cas leans forward, ghosts his fingers over Dean's heavily bandaged side. “I was able to fix the sigils,” he says, then adds softly, “I never meant for them to be turned into a weapon against you for my sake. I just wanted to protect you, Dean.”

Dean flaps his hand up and catches the angel's fingers in his own, holds on tight. “I know, Cas,” he answers. “You did good. 's all good.”

And it is.

 


End file.
